A large amount of digital photos are being created with the ubiquitous digital cameras, camera cellphones, and personal digital assistants (PDAs). Significant opportunities exist for new applications that deal with digital photos. Video games and puzzles are two applications that already have a large user base.
Current video games that uses photos include different versions of an online photo tagging game that has attracted a large number of players, a game that locates objects in photos, and a tabletop computer game that plays like a word game and tags photos. Other current video applications work with photos but these applications are not games. Further, current online services and computer applications exist for printing traditional photo jigsaw puzzles with curvy pieces. Portions of photographic images that appear on the pieces, however, are created from a fixed solution pattern or seem to be arbitrarily generated from the images.
Other current video games use polyomino pieces. Polyominoes are generalizations of dominoes, as they are geometric game pieces constructed from connecting n square blocks together with adjacent edges and corners aligned. Polyominoes are not only fun to play with, they have been seriously studied by computer scientists and mathematicians. For the general public and non-specialists, the most popular forms of polyominoes are tetrominoes (n=4) and pentominoes (n=5). These  cases provide enough complexity to be fun but not too much as to be frustratingly difficult. In these current games, the user moves, rotates and places the pieces on a pre-defined area to fill up rows. The pieces are simply colored and some are decorated with icons to indicate bonuses. Some pre-defined areas are rectangular and some non-rectangular. These areas also have some strategically located squares that are eliminated. As the rows are filled up by the user, they disappear to reveal a picture in the background. The user can customize the game by adding photos for the background.
Tetromino “falling blocks” video games, such as Tetris, are released on a large spectrum of platforms. More generally, a “falling blocks” video game can have polyominoes composed of k square blocks, where k is a positive integer. These games are immensely popular in many countries around the world. A random sequence of tetrominoes, or shapes composed of four square blocks each, fall down the playing field. The object of these games is to manipulate these tetrominoes, by moving each one sideways and rotating it by 90 degree units, with the aim of creating a horizontal line of blocks without gaps. When such a line is created, it disappears, and the blocks above if any fall. The games end when the player “tops out,” that is, when the stack of tetrominoes reaches the top of the playing field and no new tetrominoes are able to enter. Current variations of “falling blocks” have pictures drawn on the pieces. An amusing example is one that has cows on the pieces. These are pre-drawn cartoon pictures and not photographic images, however.
What is needed is a method of generating polyomino game pieces constructed from the salient parts of digital photographic images for use in polyomino video games. Further, what is needed is a method of generating polyomino jigsaw puzzle constructed from the salient parts of digital photographic images for use in polyomino jigsaw puzzles.